


human sacrifice

by TobermorianSass



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Epistolary, F/M, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Politics, Propaganda, Semi-Canon Compliant, Unreliable Narrator, alliance building is 1/10th ethics, and 9/10ths choosing your friends by the size of their guns, davits draven/mon mothma if you squint, meddling with history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 06:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17239403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: The Alliance cuts ties with Saw Gerrera, but the truth is not as spotless as it appears on the historical record.





	human sacrifice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Filigranka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/gifts).



> Happy New Year, pal. I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> Special thanks to both SecondStarOnTheLeft and renaissance for helping me with bits and bobs of this fic.

 

_It’s called service, remember? You’re cleaning the political drains. It’s the dirtiest job democracy has on offer._

_—_ _Our Game_ , John le Carré  

 

**

RI 301-EC

TO: SPANNER

FROM: CMD

You promised you wouldn’t.

—

RI 386-IS

TO: GENERAL DRAVEN

FROM: COMMANDER MOTHMA

The Partisan Group isn’t good enough, General. They endanger civilians. End of discussion.

—

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: SPANNER

FROM: CMD

How many more? How many will it take for you to stop? How many more promises will you make? Look at [REDACTED]. Would it take a [REDACTED] make you happy?

This isn’t a [REDACTED]. War is governed by rules — we can’t stoop to their levels or we run the risk of corrupting ourselves and turning into the very thing we seek to destroy.

You’re killing the galaxy.

[REDACTED]

* * *

The early months of the New Republic pass in an uneasy haze of busywork, flimsis, hastily contrived peace and reconciliation visits, charity visits, humanitarian visits, HoloNet News interviews, Senate meetings, command meetings, intelligence meetings, under the table intelligence meetings, Draven’s shredder and his magnetic eraser-head, getting rid of any and all the incriminating records: creating a backdated paper trail and forever obliterating the rest of the detritus, consigning it to the ether of cyberhell.

There’s something to be said for the sick thrill the black tape, sliding across the angry emails, gives, forever blacking out all the things she ought to have left unsaid in the first place.

* * *

The Wroonian shore is dark and cold at this time of the night, though the latter can’t touch her inside the safe house. She waits, house doused in darkness except for the single candle burning in the window on the first floor. An invitation, though not the kind she usually lays out for —

Mon settles her chin on her arm to watch the shore and banishes the thought. The future of the Rebellion, the galaxy depends on her. She cannot afford to let personal sentiment get in the way of decision-making. Force knows, it could be so easy to let the thrill carry her. But at the end of the thrill lies the crash and they cannot afford the crash.

(“ _You_ ,” he says, voice dripping with scorn. “You think you can lead the galaxy?”

“Better me than a mountain of corpses.”

“You’re a fool.”)

Maybe she is a fool. Maybe it does take blood, tragedy and a martyr to rally a rebellion.

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: CMD

FROM: SPANNER

Every day you [REDACTED],  none by my hand.

* * *

His laughter is rough and heady.

He always laughs at her. He laughs without malice, but lately she isn’t so sure. There’s a desperate edge — everything has a desperate edge nowadays. The desperation turns him hard. Sharp, like a vibroknife and three times as dangerous. There are times when he laughs and the contempt oozes from his every pore. He laughs at her now, not long after arriving: long, loping strides that rise over the hushed murmur of the waves, strides she’d know anywhere in the galaxy. He laughs at her over the old argument they’ve been having for the past eighteen years. Death, no death; violence, civil protest; armed rebellion, the Senate. Round and round, with years of resentment, contempt, familiarity layered on till Saw laughs, instead of fighting back, when she tells him the Alliance can’t accept such flagrant disregard for civilian lives, not even while chasing a righteous, justified cause.

“Still in white,” he says, when he’s finished. “Still pretending.”

He makes her feel like a child. Young, fumbling and foolish. What the pfassk does she know about the galaxy — what does Chandrila know of war, or death, or martyrs? His mouth slants, bitterly, _Chandrila debates_. Poor little rich girl, playing at revolution.

“Doesn’t he tell you?” he says. “You need blasters for a revolution, Mon. Deaths. A kriffing war.”

She turns away from the sea to face him. He has her at a disadvantage: he towers over her. Tall, broad. Devastatingly handsome. Unlike all the others, Saw has always been certain. No doubts, no wavering. Saw doesn’t like the wavering, which is why he pushes, keeps pushing and testing. He marks where she puts her foot down, laughs and breaks the line anyway.

Saw unlike all the others has fever-dreams of martyrdom.

“War, perhaps,” she replies. “But not this cheapening of life.”

He laughs again. “Always a dreamer, Mon.”

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: CMD

FROM: SPANNER

Maybe I am a murderer. I concede. I know what I am. [REDACTED]

* * *

The trouble with Saw is that he’s dangerous. He puts his thumb on her cheek, in a slight, familiar caress. The rest of them come to her, searching and she gives them what they need: absolution, certainty, justifications. An illusory dock, where they can rest their lives and their consciences. Perhaps their consciences more than their lives. Saw needs nothing. Saw is a planetary black hole: contains all things, contains infinity, draws the nearest object of substance to him. She couldn’t hold a glowrod up to him, if they stood side by side at the table instead of, as always, arguing furiously over the future. If it wasn’t for the fighting, she’d be in trouble.

He talks and it’s easy to let herself believe in the stark strokes of black and white he paints the galaxy in. Like Cham Syndulla, he’s a gifted rhetorician. Unlike Cham, Saw still dreams of pan-galactic rebellion and it’s easy when he delivers his speeches — pithy aphorisms, cut sharply into incisive calls to action — to close her eyes and dream. The galaxy in revolt, united under a single banner, united by a single blaster-shot that — _the blaster-shot heard around the galaxy_ , he calls it. When he says it, it’s easy to believe the war could be that simple. Fire a blaster enough times and eventually the galaxy sits up and pays attention to the blood-drenched fields.

“Who needs a cabinet?” he once told her. “Revolutions come from people, not policy.”

Maybe all they do need is one man, in the right place at the right time. A martyr, a cause, a name and a face to put on their posters and sell to their naysayers.

Saw’s a liability and a danger, selling dangerous lies, high on a narcissist’s dreams of martyrdom, glory and bloody, bloody war.

Mon stands and brushes past him, taking refuge behind an elegant floor-standing vase, curved in the oblong neck of the Sah’otian heron and almost as tall as her. A careless, cruel taunt that bears all the marks of Draven’s touch.

“There’s too many deaths,” she tells him. Reminds herself. “You’re indiscriminate.”

“Maybe,” he says. “But I’m an honest man.”

The vase is cool to the touch, chilled and dusty from neglect.

“Do you think it’s easy,” she asks him, coolly. “I weigh each choice —”

“No,” he says forcefully. “You weigh the choices Draven gives you.”

“I weigh the choices,” she repeats, ice cold. “I prefer minimal damage.”

“You’d sign a ceasefire with them, if they made you promises.”

“I’m not a fool.”

Saw moves across the white marble: slow, long, considered strides. The fragment of a half-remembered quote, from a poorly-remembered play crosses her mind. _He bestrides the galaxy like an angry Gargantelle._ This is why Saw is dangerous. Saw could be Palpatine, if he liked. If he had the means. No, no he couldn’t be Palpatine; but he could take the place of the Emperor.

They can’t afford it.

His hand closes around her wrist, just below the slender silver bracelet — Bel, at Belazura, slipping it around her wrist before the split.

“No.” His voice is low. “You’re far worse.”

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: SPANNER

FROM: CMD

You have no right.

—

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: CMD

FROM: SPANNER

Where is your fine talk of [REDACTED] now?

* * *

She tries to break free, but his grip is durasteel-strong. Saw has always been much stronger than he looks, even now, after all the Empire’s bolts and shrapnel.

“Am I?” she demands. “I’m not the one setting off bombs at noon in the heart of a city, just for the attention.”

“The attention?” His hand tightens painfully. “In case it’s escaped your attention, there’s a war going on and _you_ are the one sitting around at tables, debating action, while the Partisans drive the Empire back.”

She tries prising his fingers free, but he merely catches her other hand as well and continues: “Or else, your secret hand. All your little fighting crews who get their hands dirty for you on the ground so you can keep wearing that white dress and play at pretend —”

“Pretend what?”

His eyes search her face, looking for something she’s never been able to give him. Everyone else looks for absolution. But Saw doesn’t need absolution. Saw has always wanted fervour, feverish rage, the clamoring of violent revolution running in her veins — commitment. Undying, fervent commitment.

He’s so close she can feel his breath stir her hair, a little; ghost clammy and warm along her neck. Even now, it sets heat simmering in the base of her spine and rouses the desire to press her body along his. Yet once again, push him down on the sofa and fuck him instead of letting their argument come to its natural conclusion — and she would, if it wasn’t an emergency, if things weren’t starting to fall apart in her hands and if she wasn’t trying every last trick to keep it all together: if, if, if.

“Pretend revolution,” he says, eventually. “Senator.”

She barely restrains herself from slapping him.

“You think the problem begins and finishes with Palpatine,” he continues. “You can’t see the sickness, because you are the sickness. Wearing white, when you should be wearing red, Senator. Red, for my people. Red, for the galaxy — which you sold. Ceasefire with the fucking —”

“And what would you have had?” she cuts in, voice low with barely restrained rage. “Unceasing war? A purge? How many worlds would you have killed, Saw?”

“As many as it took!”

Mon refuses to wait before delivering the killing blow. “How would it make you any different from the Emperor?”

Even in the dim light, she can see the hurt and rage war, before the rage wins.

“You,” he snarls.

Mon forces herself to inhale, to keep the scream that threatens to escape her at the burning, throbbing pain as his grip on her wrist twists sharply.

“Tell me, Saw,” she says, as steadily as she can manage. “Tell me the difference between purging Separatist worlds and purging dissenting ones.”

He doesn't answer. His gaze is inscrutable, as though he's searching her for the correct answer. Another bone to throw her. Keep her happy for another day, another thirty or forty civilians caught in the crossfire of his great martyr’s war.

If she was cruel she’d —

She prises herself free and steps away, carefully smoothing her dress, slightly creased by the blaster pistol strapped around his thigh.

“I’m afraid you have to leave,” she says, cool and composed.

It startles an incredulous laugh out of him. “Just like that? No more insults to throw at me, Core girl?”

“I mean the Alliance.”

He steps away from the statue and towards her, again. Mon waits, unflinching and unmoving. The cards have been shuffled in her favour. Without her, Saw will be no more than a crazy tinpot revolutionary and Force knows, tinpot revolutionaries come a credit a dozen in this galaxy. Before Saw was Nightswan. Before Nightswan, Teller. The list continues all the way back to the day the Republic died.

Some might even say Dooku was the original tinpot revolutionary. High on dreams of glory, corrupted by power. Saw is, in his own way, incorruptible — but —

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: SPANNER

FROM: CMD

[REDACTED]

* * *

“The Alliance can no longer countenance the losses and the means through which you seek —”

“To overthrow the Empire,” he says. “Burn it down.”

Mon fiddles with the slim belt on her dress. “Yes.”

She waits, steeled for an outburst that never comes. As always, Saw swerves, defies expectations. It’s what has made the Partisans a formidable fighting force — and Saw so utterly, utterly unmoldable and infuriating.

She’d like to rip that inscrutable, mocking little smile off his face. He’s worn it for the past eighteen years, mocking her at every turn for being a mynock out of vacuum: little Core girl, turned revolutionary. He’s the one who brings the blasters; she’s built the networks that pay for them. And now, now Saw Gerrera is a —

“A liability,” he says. He’s close, very close — he puts his hand on her throat and his thumb over the swell of her larynx. “Is that all I am now?”

Mon swallows. “Surely you can understand why some might find your methods distasteful.”

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: CMD

FROM: SPANNER

[REDACTED]

* * *

The flimsi shreds. Millions of thin little strips, drifting like the snow at Lake Sah’ot in the deep midwinter. Histories, fragmented into alphabets. Forever lost. Captain Vienaris will be along in a minute to take them away for burning.

“File RI 301-EC?” says Draven, intent on the holotank.

Mon drives a black line through the flimsi in her hands, blacking out Saw’s last words to her: _you can run, Mon, but your lies will hunt you down_.

Saw Gerrera is a liability, she reminds herself, suppressing the twinge of guilt.

“Scrub.”

* * *

“Don’t you wonder, Saw,” she breathes, “what your sister would have thought? Your fever dreams —”

“My sister,” he says through gritted teeth, “knew the cost of war.”

“And wanted to end it.”

“Stop lying,” he hisses. “You know this has nothing to do with the deaths.”

(“What he needs?” Her informant laughs. “He wants symbols. Not people.”)

Saw has always had trouble seeing beyond the end of his nose, but this time —

His thumb rests at the place where her jaw curves. The print he will leave will fade in a matter of minutes, as these things do, though she won’t forget the rough calluses, the hard little corner of skin along his thumbnail where he’s bitten it engrossed deep in thought — in his fever dreams of martyrdom.

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: SPANNER

FROM: CMD

My disagreements with [REDACTED] are irrelevant and furthermore, beyond your purview.

* * *

“He was right,” he says.

Garm, who never fully understood the sick thrill of wondering whether the holocam on her datapad had been swapped for an optic recording stud, if the studs in the sofa along the line of her Senate office hadn’t been replaced by the ISB. He left of his own volition, when she finally ran out of answers for him.

There’s a twist to Saw’s mouth that suggests he’s only finally seeing the truth which struck Garm months ago.

“You’ve always wanted —”

“This has nothing to do with control,” she says stiffly. “Or power. It’s about the liability you’ve become to our movement —”

She stops herself and inhales, buying time as she picks her next words carefully. Too much and her hand lies exposed and Saw will zig, instead of zag, as he always does — instead of following, correctly.

The dangerous thing about Saw is that Saw has always been a leader, by nature — and armies are not three-headed chimeras.

“The council is at a deadlock,” she tells him. “The Alliance has a fixed pool of resources, none so large enough we can afford your excesses.”

“Which are?”

“We can no longer afford to support you,” she says, dodging his question with skill.

The questions they had on Chandrila were louder, more insistent the last time she was at Hanna City, right before the ISB dispatch. They’d been louder for a long time, by then. All the answers she couldn’t afford, because the HNN was always there, recording, Palpatine’s ever-seeing, ever-omniscient eye watching for the slightest sign of dissent. In the Senate, there were times she couldn’t help herself and the words came tumbling out as she remembered Padme, with her hair fanned out around her and flowers and pearls threaded through them, which was the price the Empire exacted before it could find its feet. But standing on a platform in Hanna City, or in Chandrila’s palace of records, all she could see was the luminous red of the HNN holocam recording her and the white crisp lines of the ISB officer’s uniform, somewhere on the edge of the crowd or worse, in her blind spot and then, it was easier to play her cards for the long game and dodge the questions with an ease cultivated in the latter days of the Clone Wars.

Forty-five, a liar by profession.

But maybe the questions would be different, now. Maybe more, now, with her in exile and the Empire’s boot heel crushing down on Chandrila’s slender, pampered neck. Sometimes she wonders what they say, if they remember her as a martyr or a liar, a criminal. A terrorist. Colonel Delto has his finger on the galaxy’s pulse, but if she asks him for answers, it’ll be another weapon in Draven’s growing arsenal — in intel’s growing arsenal; more toys with which to lead her around the backyard.

“I see.” His eyes dart to the heron-vase and then back to her face. “And this safe house — your corvette —”

* * *

The Mon Cal cruiser is deserted in the first few hours after the triumph at Endor. Ackbar, Dodonna and Rieekan are by the ship’s holotanks, scrambling and redeploying the fleet to make good on the burning wreckage of the Empire, suspended in space ahead of them; Cracken is a phantom, rarely seen, rarely heard — always off somewhere, managing their sprawling network of spies; and here is Draven, with a flimsiplast extended towards her.

“Your files,” he says. “They’ll want to know everything.”

There’s a public relations disaster-in-waiting in those files. There must be. Jedha — Jebel’s incessant resource-cuts at odds with his own lavish robes, his corvette — Fest — the Ersos - every SpecOps soldier, hand-chosen and thrown to the Empire’s lasercannons because the Separatists could be relied on, like the revolutions of Chandrila on its axis, to hate the Empire with suicidal fervour —

Saw.

* * *

“Necessities.”

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: SPANNER

FROM: CMD

[REDACTED]

* * *

Jebel, with his hands folded, talks about costs. The numbers the holoprojector are running bear them out. In her hands, the flimsireport, his carefully compiled report takes on an intangible horrible obtrusiveness, as though if anyone looked her way they’d see every single one of the Empire’s hysterical reports of anarchists and terrorists thoughtfully printed in toned ink aurabesh by his aide, a slender young man who can’t — or won’t meet her eye.

“If we continue like this,” says Jebel — and leaves the rest to her imagination.

She’d like to consign him to the depths of Corellia’s nine hells, if she could. But Senator Vaspar’s hologram leans across the table and asks her what justifies this _Saw_ , when his strikes only bring the boot of the Empire down harder on civilians and when he accomplishes nothing —

“Nothing,” he says. “We could do the same with two, instead of fifteen soldiers, if we wanted to stoop that low, if we hated the civilian people of the galaxy as much as he does.”

“He’s a madman,” says Jebel.

Mon turns to the last person present and sees the same terror, doubt mirrored in her eyes.

* * *

RI 500-IS

TO: COMMANDER MOTHMA

FROM: GENERAL DRAVEN

[REDACTED]

* * *

She’s always held that ghosts are fictive superstition. Religion, invented by sentients to obscure difficult histories, quell guilt and the uneasy fragments of the past, always threatening to surface when least wanted. She’s never believed in the unfinished longing, the endless circling around the past, never quite daring to touch it, never quite daring to look away. The past was best where it belonged. Open it and like a wound, it threatened to spill all its unwanted, tainted secrets everywhere, contaminating everything in its path. Best to let the skin grow over, the wound to remain a scar that time and distance would eventually disappear: like the scab on her knee, barely noticeable from a fall from a speeder when she was nine.

The cruiser is empty. Ackbar, Dodonna, Rieekan finally retired for a well-deserved, rare moment of celebration. It’s just her and Draven and —

And.

* * *

“He’s a weight around our necks,” Senator Vaspar says quietly. “The longer we keep him, the closer the Empire gets to us.”

* * *

RI 500-IS

TO: GENERAL DRAVEN

FROM: COMMANDER MOTHMA

I know. Do what you have to.

* * *

And Saw, his piercing gaze bearing down on the back of her neck, where her hair is standing on end; a false flag operation executed on her by her overactive conscience, an imagination fed by intel’s paranoia — if they connect the dots, if they twist it, if they let their prejudices get the better of them, if they let her enemies color it in for them.

Saw is dead on Jedha. The magnetic eraser-head slides over the Erso files, purging the unfortunate conversational trail — Draven: _you realize we need him for this_ , her, conscience twinging: _I know_ , him, unrelenting: _if the Empire traces the path_ , her, from a clandestine meeting with one of her Senator friends that even intel doesn’t know about: _if we have no other choice_ , him, with the inevitable but imagined eyeroll (saved for her, returning yet another dubious decision to him): _very well,_ Commander. Not even Jedha: but atomized, in the terrible vacuum of space.

She’s allowed herself to wonder, on a few rare occasions, whether he saw their fingerprints all over it. Not _how_ , she knew how. Saw would have met death straight-backed and proud, daring it to turn him into a martyr. But she wondered if he turned to Jyn and asked her which one of them did it: Draven, always the pragmatist, or her, the consummate pretender.

Saw would have known: her, turning away from Idryssa Barruck and back to Senator Jebel, waiting impatiently for his answer, hologram flickering in the dark. Saw had his Partisans. Senator Jebel had Uyter, a crucial link in the Rebellion’s supply chain and through them, the Mid-Rim, in the palm of their hand. Senator Vaspar had Balamak — and the leftover Separatists who flocked to them in search of revenge.

The Separatists, unlike the Partisans, had discipline, intimate acquaintance with the importance of the chain of command, numbers — and plausible deniability, when caught. If caught.

Another file vaporizes. The room continues to shrink. She’s never believed in ghosts, but now with the magnetic eraserhead in her hands and the hair on her neck standing on end, she’d believe Saw’s watching with that horrible, awful smile and the rasping sound of his breathing chasing her down the years.

* * *

“You’re still lying,” he tells her contemptuously. “Face it, Mon.”

She puts her hand tentatively on his wrist, the vaguest thought of pushing him away gently and definitely.

“It’s not cheap,” she says slowly, clearly, “running a rebellion. Doing your PR.”

* * *

RI 301-EC [CONT.]

TO: CMD

FROM: SPANNER

I am, as ever, at your disposal.

* * *

“How close are they?” he asks her. “The Empire?”

Saw is too clever for the kind of lies she’s fed Palpatine, fed Hanna City, fed the Senate her whole life.

“Close.”

Saw seems to relax at this, his shoulders easing as though he’s finally heard what he came to hear.

“And so?” he asks her. “I’m not one of your suicidal pets, Mon.”

“Pet, no.” Suicidal, yes. “You understand the situation we’re in.”

“I understand,” he replies, with that horrible, awful smile. “Saw Gerrera has nothing more to give the Alliance, so the Alliance has nothing more to give him.”

His hands are gentle. Too fucking gentle.

“Isn’t it?”

She tries to shake her head, but his hands have her trapped — he has her trapped. Saw Gerrera, smiling at her as though he’s seen it all from start to finish.

“Garm was right, you see,” he says in barely a whisper. In the silence, it hangs trapped between their breaths — his, calm, long, hers, shallow and terrified. “No, not the power. You’re too much like _him_ , more than you think.”

“You’re our ally,” she recites. “Always have, always will be.”

His mouth is soft against hers at first. Soft, like the start when he still believed the fiction peddled through their network of flimsijournals and underground holonet pages — the white dress, the ethereal appearance. Senator Mon Mothma, the youngest Senator in thousands of years — the youngest _ever_ , said the HoloNet Network. She never disputed the fact. Saw Gerrera came to them early on, when she was still Mon Mothma, youngest Senator ever, and she never bothered correcting him.

Later, she surprised him in the Alliance safehouse dressed up as a holiday home along the Belazurian seashore, putting one hand on top of his as moonlight rippled along the sea stretched out below them. He kissed softly at first, then rougher when she nipped at his lower lip.

Rough, but with the tenderness of lovers, trapped in the first heady throes of love: every flaw, a miracle; every imperfection, perfect. Intel called this the honeymoon period. Those weeks, months where spy and spymaster are still infatuated with each other and neither is willing to let the other go. Though she and Saw were neither. They were Senator and freedom-fighter. Politician, revolutionary — him, on fire and eloquent in his denunciations of galactic injustices; her, the evergreen idealist and would-be seditionist. Each, mirror images of themselves in their eyes: her, a revolutionary; him, an idealist and a principled dissenter.

The infatuation wore thin. When had it come, for the two of them? One day his kisses were no longer tender, but drowned in acrimony, in accusation. He left bruises along her shoulders and the pale, fleshy unexposed parts of her arm. Perfect semi-circles that turned yellow, then purple and blue where he bit her while they made love — on the sofa, in her bedroom, against the wall, even — before finally vanishing for her to begin the cycle again. He urged her to action; she urged him to caution and when he wouldn’t listen, drew his head down and kissed him till he let his hands touch her waist.

Of course, by then she was no longer Senator Mon Mothma, the youngest in thousands of years, maybe ever, by then. She was Commander. It stung, when it rolled off his tongue in bitter mockery as she tried, once more, to impress on him the urgency of tactical strikes. Not just visibility, not just damage but resource allocation. Success. Saw turned up his nose at all of them and perhaps he was kind, kind enough to not tell her she sounded like one of the atrocious nasally weasels the HoloNet Network pulled up to praise Palpatine’s efficient new economy: efficient _resource allocation_ . He merely called her _Commander_ , with a subtle sting to how he said it, same as the sting of the bruises he left behind, of the way he kissed now: angry as the autumn storms that sometimes swept through Lake Sah’ot and left its pebble beaches and its white stone homes turned upside down and unrecognizable. And filthy, before the rain and Chandrilan Social repainted it.

Like all good marriages, of convenience and otherwise, time put their flaws under the microscope and magnified the hairline fractures that held the Alliance together. Their alliance, together. Saw was mercurial, flipping between paranoia and bloodthirsty vengeance — seductive in her wilder flights of fantasies; impossible in person. She was —  besides Commander, she wondered what she’d become in Saw’s eyes. Perhaps the tattered remains of the saint Cracken and Janyor invented for their fictions, that Bail still believed in and Garm had decided was as contemptible, hungry for power, as Palpatine was. So, human. Fallible. Needy, even: tracking his eyes tracing her as her dress slides off her shoulders, him holding her throat as he fucks her held up against the wall after a particularly nasty fight, pulling him close after another until he relents against the length of her body pressed up against his, pinning him down by his wrists and hoping viciously for bruises — indelible proof of her presence for the future.

No, not proof. She'd wanted to know if it hurt, if she could hurt. He smiled and laughed silently instead. Fight forgotten. Resentment gone — suppressed, at the very least, to surface in some paranoid revelry at a later date.

Saw's fingers dig into her jaw, painfully and then a sharp sting shoots through her lip, followed by the sharp, metallic taste of blood. Familiar, from the last time she kissed him and then bit his lip, because he'd said: _what do you know Core girl_ ? And for a moment, pure rage seized her. The last days before the Empire, Padme adrift in a boat, watching senators she knew picked off one by one by the ISB, the silent wait for something — someone — to snitch, the game falling apart, the impulsive checks re-checks triple checks of every surface, every corner, every seam in her office, apartment, home, holiday home searching for proof positive that she was being watched - she must be, she had to be: all of it crowded in and she wondered what the _pfassk_ he knew about playing the game, undercover. Or if he knew, in fact, that she’d been on more than a hundred missions to worlds across the Outer Rim — more worlds than he’d ever see with his tiny band of ragtag ter — _rebels_ — and seen in intimate, painful detail, what the Empire, Republic and Separatists were capable of.

He pulls away. His eyes, when she finds the courage to look, are sad, not furious or contemptuous as they’ve so often been of late — her, him, of each other, round and round in a never-ending loop.

“He does his job well, cleaning all your drains,” he says hoarsely, in her ear. “Better. Isn’t it?”

Maybe. She can’t bring herself to do more than hold his gaze.

* * *

“You collect us,” Garm told her. “Snap your fingers and we jump — isn’t that right, _Commander_?”

* * *

“You should try it more often,” he says. “Honesty — it suits you.”

“When you’re ready —”

He takes her hand and presses her knuckles to his lips; a strange and old-world courtliness that sits strangely on Saw and his rebel ragtag ways, surly to the point of rudeness.

“Run and hide,” he says. “Keep running. But remember, Mon, the galaxy has an end. One day —”

She waits for him to finish, but he never does. He turns on his heel and then, he’s gone. The door shuts silently behind him. In the past, he’s never demurred from slamming it shut in a rage — arguments where he’s accused her of cowardice or worse. Paranoid fits that seize him and leave him, unpredictable as the winds along the Wroonian seashore. There’s no more anger. Saw has always worn his anger on his sleeve — to their detriment, not just his and not just the Partisans.

It won’t be their last fight, though the arguments will be carried out via proxy — holograms, third parties. He’ll send her a hologram, accusing her of inaction, cowardice. This will remain enshrined in public memory, witnessed by a handful of officers and fellow rebel leaders.

Saw Gerrera, she thinks, as she watches him stride down the beach through the curtains, will make a martyr of himself yet.

* * *

“You should have told me,” she tells Draven.

The Yavin forest is dark and tranquil though the ziggurat is anything but, but it’s not Yavin she’s thinking of but the sands of Jedha and Saw, holed up in a cave somewhere. Finally the martyr he’d dreamed of being: first victim to the Empire’s planet-killer.

“You read the messages.”

“What other choice did we have?”

In the glass, the fictive image of Saw’s reflection flickers.

“Depends,” Draven says carelessly. “Depends on how you want to look at it.”

* * *

“The ISB only needs one weak link,” says Jebel. “We should pre-empt them.”

Pre-emptive strikes: Cracken and Draven relish them, carrying them out in secrecy and when it's done, presenting the blacked-out reports with a rueful smile, knowing perfectly well all she can do is dispatch Hendri and Janyor to tidy the record for them all. Saw likes his pre-emptive strikes too, but the irony of this is beyond the purview of Jebel’s petty, numerical world.

 _Whatever happened to strength in solidarity_ , she wants to ask them. Whatever happened to the promises made on holiday in Aldera, when the Alliance was first testing its wings and Bail told them all they’d rise or fall depending on whether they stayed united, or cut their losses and threw the unwanted to the Empire and their running dogs: the ISB.

“You’re right,” she says. “We can’t afford it.”

* * *

RI 500-IS

TO: COMMANDER MOTHMA

FROM: GENERAL DRAVEN

[REDACTED]

* * *

Datatape after datatape. Captain Vienaris painstakingly splices them together and de-fragments them till the last traces of in-between, existing files are gone. Whole months of correspondence, gone. Jakku comes and goes and they finally clean the last of the Scarif files. Saw Gerrera is locked away, forever preserved in black-taped, redacted for security fragments of history.

All of them — survivors of the war — look much better on the record than off.

* * *

Mon shoves the last of the flimsiplast files into the fire, feet sunk ankle-deep in the thick carpet that lines her room. A gentle breeze stirs the lake outside and the waves lap gently against the pebbled beach and the pier that bisects the shore. She could be back on Wroona: the Sah’otian vase has followed her here, along with the detritus of years spent in the Senate — ornate brass lilies from Naboo, silver pewter elephants from Uyter, a pair of jade krayt dragons from Bail and Breha, richly dyed coral from Ackbar. But this is home — Chandrila, her old familiar dacha on the shores of Lake Sah’ot. She is alone, at home, in a place where Saw has never been.

It's the baleful gaze of the Sah’otian heron vase, joined by two graceful long-necked bulabird statues, following her around the room. Saw exists only in the holopuzzle pieces of their digital archive: Saw Gerrera, rebel, terrorist, too prone to violence, never our friend, never our ally. Her last official letter about him, in scrawling cursive, formally censuring Saw and severing ties with him, sent months after the last conversation they had in person.

The Empire picked off the rest of the Partisans after Jedha. One by one, across the galaxy. They never reached out to the Alliance; the Alliance never extended a hand to them. None of them remain either: none of Saw’s fanatics to aim a blaster between her eyes, or denounce her to a cantankerous and divided Senate who’d like to see her gone now there’s no Palpatine searching for dissidents to put down like mad dogs — they’re sea-killers, stir crazy for the first sign of blood and it _won’t_ be hers.

Somewhere inside the house, a door opens. Mon freezes, breath catching sharply in her throat. Even now, still relearning the dimensions and whims of her old familiar home, she knows the way the walls curve, bend and scatter the sound. This sound is downstairs, to her right, ahead, where the front door opens onto a gravel path that branches off into a tiny path down to the shore on one side and to the road on the other.

The fifth floorboard from the door groans. Saw used to announce himself this way on Belazur, on Wroona. Long, measured and heavy boot-steps that always set the fifth floorboard from the door groaning, where Cracken had loosened and weakened it and transformed it into an undetectable alarm for her. But Saw is gone, on Jedha, and none of his loyalists remain — no one with an interest in returning; no one who knew any different than the public record. The last, most dangerous remains of his legacy are crackling in the fire in front of her.

(Draven, curious and off the record, between the Wobani breakout and Jedha, despite her emailed assurances: “You understand we could be leading them right to him.”

“I know.”

“He could —”

“I know.”

“You understand,” he says, finally, “there’s no _finish_. It’ll come back, one day.”

Sunset over Yavin, she’d thought, was perhaps the only way to watch it — clouds streaked orange, pink, purple in quick succession as though they were on fire. If this was the price, not just for Yavin but world after world spanning the entire galaxy, she’d pay it as many times as needed.

“I understand.”)

Her fingers tighten unconsciously around the fire-iron as the door opens, though a fire-iron won’t be much use against a ghost, Saw back from the dead or one of his Partisans, back to close unfinished business.

“Felucia is a go,” Draven is saying, as he enters. “We just need clearance —”

He stops in his tracks and raises a single eyebrow at her: standing barefoot by the fireplace, clutching a fire-iron, prepared to fight a moving, invisible target - some sad Partisan, the past, Saw.

“Holiday air treating you well?” he inquires, then adds dryly: “You look like you’ve been living with ghosts.”

The fire crackles as the flimsis finally disintegrate. She pokes at the fire, till all that’s left of the flimsis is ash.

“No ghosts,” she replies with half a smile in his direction, still crouched by the fire. “Just thought you were someone else for a second.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, yes I know Draven is dead before Endor in canon, but in my heart The Rebel Files, first edition, will always be the Most Canon.
> 
> Speaking of The Rebel Files, Mon Mothma's opening letter to Draven is taken straight from the book. Mon Mothma in her office on Yavin, telling Draven "You should have told me" is similarly taken from the Rogue One novelization, though everything that comes afterwards is mine.


End file.
